He nourished indeed a hope that one day this little fast-closed church, named for an English saint and so typically English with its quiet graveyard and its ancient yew, might mean something to those who lived round it, that it might be a home to them, like the always-open churches he had seen in Italy. More, having now a practical experience of the bitter spiritual needs of the poor in a small neglected town parish, he indulged sometimes in what he felt to be an almost chimerical vision, of a church, spacious and beautiful as it might be, set in some great manufacturing town where life was thickly pent and had no hope or outlet—a church for the poor, served by the poor. When he was tired, which was not unseldom, he used to think of this dream structure of his, even picturing some of its architectural details. Of late he had admitted Dormer to the same occupation, and though to the latter the grimy surroundings of the imaginary fabric were clearly not an attraction, as they were to its original designer, the idea gained substance from his participation in it. Having ruled out galleries, family pews and the Royal arms, settled that the holy table should not only be fenced off from desecration, but that it should be restored to the position at present usurped by the pulpit, they—or rather Dormer—had even gone so far as to decide on the dedication. Hence at this very moment, while his eyes were fixed on a great white bastion of cloud rising exultant over the sky-line, Tristram was thinking that if his dining-room table at Compton, relic of the solid hospitality of Clapham days, was to be used in the refectory of the attached college of priests, the said college would have to be built on a more generous scale than Dormer seemed to think necessary; he should tell him so this evening. It would be a waste to sell that table.
He began to walk faster, exulting in the wind that resisted him, in the song of the larks above him, in the great cloud, in the wonderful feeling both of loneliness and of life at the highest pitch. Scraps of that incomparable Te Deum, the hundred and forty-eighth Psalm, came into his mind—"Praise the Lord upon earth, ye dragons and all deeps; fire and hail, snow and vapours; wind and storm, fulfilling his word; mountains and all hills, fruitful trees and all cedars..."
At this point he perceived, rather to his astonishment, that he was not alone upon the Downs. About a quarter of a mile off two people had emerged upon the smooth curve of the hill that rose before him, walking swiftly, a sheep-dog heralding their way. They must have come up by the old track in the hollow to have remained hidden until that moment, thought Tristram as he idly watched them. They were too far off for him to see anything distinctive; he could make no guess at their identity, only, by their movements, they were young, and they were man and woman. But as he looked a curious interest seized upon him. It seemed to him almost as if the pulsing life around had centred in these two figures, instinct with joy and youth.
They reached the summit of the hill. A lark rose in the sky, a tiny speck against the cloud; the wind fluttered the woman's dress. Suddenly they stopped, turned, and kissed each other. There was no trace of courting or of timidity in the action; it was beautiful and fitting, as though the sun and wind had met together and praised God for the fulness of joy. The dog leapt round them barking. In another instant they were walking on as quickly as before, till they were swallowed up in a dip of the Downs.
Tristram had stopped too. In less time than it takes a pebble to fall from a cliff, the sun, the wind, the clouds, the very grass were clothed in a new significance. This, the close of the great Psalm, this was the highest thing that existence had to offer, and he was putting it by—he was putting by deliberately, with the hand of a madman, the draught which it was no longer sin to contemplate. Those two figures! He flung himself down on the ground, the lark's song beating in his brain, and prayed passionately to know the same joy before life was done.
(2)
Two hours later, as he drew near Compton Rectory, he saw down the long road a horseman cantering towards him on the wayside grass. In all his life Tristram had known only two men who sat a horse with so supreme an ease; one was his friend, the other his rival. And at that moment he could have wished it were Armand risen, from his bloody grave.
Dormer came on; drew rein and bent down. "I thought it was you," he said as they shook hands. "I guess that you left the coach at Lambourn and walked over the Downs."
"I did," answered Tristram.
"That must have been delightful," remarked the other, and Tristram, without answering, opened the Rectory gate and watched him pass in.